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The Internet is Broken: Part 1

DeniseV*c*nte

After four
decades, the internet has started corroding both itself and the
users. Although it is still an awesome and magnificent invention
right now they are problems in its foundation and trolls in its
basement. There is a problem in the way the internet it was designed
originally that initially looked like a good feature but hackers,
trolls and malevolent actors have exploited that feature. The
inventors of the web gave it a compounding architecture that
connected all the computers on the web using a one-way hyperlink that
can only tell you where you’re going but does not tell the owner of
the content who is using his or her content. Initially, the
advantages of this anonymity outweighed its disadvantages as it was
celebrated in the 1993 New York Cartoon “on the Internet, nobody
knows who you’re”. However, lately, this has poisoned civil
discussions, enabled hacking, allowed people to cyber bully each
other and made using electronic email a risk. It is obvious the
internet’s lack of security allowed the Russian hackers to screw
the United States democratic process.

The “internet is broken”.
This can be seen in its inadequacy of identification and
authentication visible in the internet’s genetic code that has
disallowed easy transactions, averted financial inclusion,
disorganised the business models of content creators and unleashed
spam. According to Walter Isaacson CEO at Aspen Institute “The
internet is no longer a place of community, no longer an agora, every
day more sites are eliminating comments sections” he said. The
trouble with the internet, Mr Williams says, “is that it rewards
extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of
course, you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behaviour
like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to
supply them”. The problem now on the internet is due to this
anonymity no one can tell if you’re a troll, or a hacker or a bot
or a high school teenager publishing a story that Donald Trump has
resigned.

The “internet
is broken” can also be observed in the “Youtube ad-apocalypse”.
The Youtube advertising relies on what’s called programmatic
advertising that uses algorithm’s and not human’s to dictate
placement. For decades Youtube has been the leader in the online
video industry with porous restrictions surrounding graphic and
offensive contents and content creators spewing contents traditional
broadcasters classify as hate speech. This made Youtube increase its
popularity. Youtube due to its immunity by the Federal law is not
held responsible for supporting the hosting of illegal content,
copyrighted material or terrorist propaganda. Youtube which enjoys
four hundred hours of video uploaded every sixty seconds and one
billion hours of video consumed every day is now incapable of
policing its platform against those hateful content videos that its
content advertisers want nothing to do with. According to Wall Street
Journal findings, PepsiCo, Walmart, Dish, Starbucks and GM have
pulled their advertising joining a growing list of dozens of
companies in Europe and the US since London Times first spotted the
problem. The reason for the massive pull out from Youtube is Google’s
inability to ensure that content advertisers ad does not appear next
to hateful and offensive content. It turned that this algorithm that
allocates the ad’s that run before or after videos automatically
was not differentiating between videos that are “brand friendly”
and those that are not.